George Bush to Ken Wilson: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Needs Your Help
"Is there a Goldman Sachs employee in the house?"The Wall Street Journal (link below) recently reported that Ken Wilson (chairman of the Goldman Sachs Financial Institutions Group) will be temporarily leaving his post at Goldman Sachs to "advise" Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on how to best resolve the current banking crisis in the United States.
Wilson is expected to help out (for a "nominal fee") until January of 2009. Apparently George Bush himself put in a call to Mr. Wilson, asking him to take a leave of absence from his job to help assist Henry Paulson in steering the country out of its current banking crisis.
As The Automatic Earth says, the "Goldmanisation" of the US economy continues. Henry Paulson used to serve as the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. And now Ken Wilson, another player on the Goldman Sachs softball team, will be advising Paulson. Let's not forget Robert Rubin (former Vice Chairman and Co-COO of Goldman Sachs) who served as the United States Treasury Secretary during both the first and second Clinton administrations, etc etc. The list goes on and on.
Anyways, a number of thoughts popped into my head after hearing this news:
1. If the President is making personal calls to Ken Wilson, asking him to "advise" Henry Paulson, then things must be really, really bad.
2. Why can't Paulson handle this himself?
3. Doesn't it make the current administration look inept if they are looking for outside help to solve a major financial crisis?
4. Will Ken Wilson be acting in the best interests of the country, or in the best interests of his friends on Wall Street?
5. Is the current administration expecting that things are going to get quite a bit worse? Seems that way if they are calling in Ken Wilson.
An interesting piece of news that doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the US economy or those who are guiding it.
Source: In Ken Wilson, Paulson Get Direction From the Go-To Banker of Wall Street
Filed under: The Economic Meltdown | General Market News
